In which are explored the matrices of text, textile, and exile through metaphor, networks, poetics, etymologies, etc., with an occasional subplot relating these elements to Iggy and the Stooges.

Friday, February 18, 2011

flower thread jumble-brain

Sometimes the beauty of the materials I work with supersedes the beauty of what I make from them. I diminish them by narrowing their vast potential into an object. I feel this especially about yarn and embroidery floss. And poetry; what lines can equal the glorious potential of the alphabets and sounds? Adeena Karasick refers to letters of the alphabet as "wriggly insignias." What could be a better representation of wriggly insignias than these twirling curly ringletty whorls of skeins?

The floss I use for cross-stitching is Danish Flower Thread. Flower thread is the generic name for non-glossy cotton embroidery thread; Danish Flower Thread (Dansk Blomstergarn) is the official thread used by the Danish Handcraft Guild (Håndarbejdet's Fremme). When I come across it in the US I used to buy out the store's supply because I considered it such a rarity, but now that I live in Minneapolis, a city that fetishizes its Scandinavian immigrant heritage, I've got a steady source at Ingebretsen's Scandinavian Gifts. In fact, I can't possibly in my lifetime use up the flower thread I've already got.

This need for over-abundance suggests also the addict's itch for color, materials, textures, the desire to bury my fingers in skeins and loops and exultations of spun and spinnable yarn-thread-stuff, to revel in it immersively forever without any pretense toward mastery.

This photo only begins to suggest the squirmy, wormy, brainlike lump of vibrant life of embroidery materials.